An Estonian weekend with Ovi

Those of you who follow me either on Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare know exactly that I spend last week in Finland, at the Nokia House in Espoo and the weekend in Estonia, one of Europe’s youngest countries. What was supposed to be just a nice, sometimes crazy, sometimes relaxing weekend ...

Those of you who follow me either on Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare know exactly that I spend last week in Finland, at the Nokia House in Espoo and the weekend in Estonia, one of Europe’s youngest countries.
What was supposed to be just a nice, sometimes crazy, sometimes relaxing weekend with friends, became very soon yet another great personal experience with Ovi.
Yes, even if I work for Nokia, Ovi manages to surprise me And those around me.

When my friend Alvar, who kindly hosted me in Tallinn, Estonia’s charming capital, told me we were going to participate to a birthday party in the middle of a forest I immediately downloaded Estonia’s street maps on my Nokia N8.
Even before entering the country on Friday evening, I was already playing around with Tallinn‘s 3D landmarks Since I know the old town fairly well, the 3D rendering of famous landmarks just made me smile. Is it just me?

Anyway, on Saturday our plans changed a bit and my friend didn’t know the exact route to the cottage in the forest anymore. Of course no address of that place was provided, only its latitude and longitude. This is how Maps came to help.
Accidentally, a couple of days earlier Surya discussed with @dublinblondie about the possibility of using geocoordinates for a search on Maps. I have never had the chance to experiment this until last Saturday and it obviously worked like a charm.

After some tweaking – which route did make more sense for us? the fastest? the shortest? – I also downloaded the Estonian voice guidance pack. Not that my friend wouldn’t have understood the English one, but I thought it was just kind and fun In fact, since Finnish and Estonian are closely related I could grasp the meaning of some commands thanks to my non-existing knowledge of Finnish language (basically only the numbers from 1 to 10).

During the two hours drive, my friend was continuously praising Maps – Wow, she’s right! I’m so excited!
Obviously, she was the female voice guidance…

I also discovered that Maps warns you if some dirt roads are on your way… And, wow! With all that snow in the forest I was really happy to be mentally prepared! I mean, no one in Italy or Germany would ever drive on such roads! But, hey, different countries, different customs.

Eventually, we reached our destination and we enjoyed the birthday party with good drinks and a delicious BBQ.
Alvar was praising Maps so much with his friends that I’m afraid I created a monster

And of course, if you have similar experiences to tell, please let me know, I can publish them on the Blog!

-Pino (@haikus)

Source : http://blog.ovi.com/2011/02/08/an-estonian-weekend...